83 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog for Smart Passive Income

Monetizing a blog is a tricky thing. There are several methods, platforms, ads, affiliates and lot more which you can use to make money online from your blog. Monetizing your blog essentially which means you have to add some things into it or make several changes that help your blog to become profitable or make money platform for you.

There are many different ways which can help you to monetize your blog. But what if there is no or less traffic to your blog. Less traffic is equal to less or no income and a huge number of visitors to your blog is equal to smart passive income for you. Refer "10 killer ideas to promote your blog to grow traffic" and make your blog a money making a platform.

So, what are those smart and profitable money making ideas? And how you can monetize your blog for smart passive income. Below are N ways to monetize your blog. Check them all. 

How to Monetize Your Blog for Smart Passive Income? Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular and effective strategies to monetize your blog or website. Selecting products and promoting them on your blog will make you earn from selling of each product with an affiliate link.

Pro Tip: Only promote products from the interest of your potential audience.

So start with finding products and promote it to your blog and plan promotional newsletter for email subscribers. Your audience will surely purchase the product by clicking on an affiliate link you shared if the product or the service resonates with them. There are several networks where you find products to promote. Explore popular affiliate networks to monetize your blog.

#1. Commission Junction: This is a massive network that offers reliable products with on-time payments.

#2. ShareASale: This network offers mostly clothes, accessories and other offline goods that you can promote on your blog or website.

#3. ClickBooth: This network offers CPA and CPG.

#4. GlobalWide Media: Another popular affiliate network that offers lots options.

#5. ClickBank: This is the leading affiliate network that offers high percentage payouts for digital products.

#6. Rakuten Marketing: A network with many leading brands that you can use to monetize your blog or website.

Sell Ad Space

This is a basic but very effective way to monetize your blog or website by selling ad space. This can be handled manually, but there are two more efficient ways with which you can manage them. One is using a network, and another is using plugin/resource. This is how you can automate much of the process. There are certain places from where you can let advertisers know that your blog or website is selling ad space.

#7. BuySellAds: This is one of the most popular ones that manages to advertise for publishers and advertisers.

#8. BuySellAds Pro: This provides a professional-grade advertising solution from BSA.

#9. WP AdCenter: This is a plugin available for WordPress website or blog that is very popular and comprehensive. The pricing for this plugin is $49.

#10. OIO Publisher: This one of the most used WordPress plugin which is the oldest one that manages ad sales. Pricing of this plugin is $47.

#11. AdSanity: This is another popular WordPress plugin which offers some great features to manage ads. The pricing for this plugin is $29.

#12. Banner Manage Pro: This is another WordPress plugin that used for selling and managing banner ads on your site or blog. Pricing of this plugin is $21.

#13. Carbon: This is an invite-only ad network that is now owned by BSA, the primary focus of this network is in the design and development industries.

#14. Yoggrt: Also this is an invite-only network from BSA that focuses on creative community.

#15. The Deck: This the oldest invite-only ad network concentrates on the web design industry. 

Set up E-Commerce Site

Apart from having just content on your blog or website, you can set up a store on your site and sell products of your own. This is one the great ways to monetize your site with 100% profit making an idea. There are several significant resources with which you can create your own shop setup.

#16. Shopify: Nowadays, this is the very popular e-commerce platform that provides lots of features that can help you to monetize your website or blog.

#17. Highwire: With this hosted e-commerce platform you can sell on Ebay and Facebook.

#18. Magento: This is an open-source e-commerce platform which is extremely popular.

#19. BigCommerce: As like Shopify this e-commerce platform also very high that provides many features.

#20. DPD: This is the great e-commerce platform which is high or selling digital products.

#21. osCommerce: As like Magento this is also an open-source e-commerce platform.

#22. WooCommerce: This is free WordPress plugin for e-commerce platform where also premium add-ons are available.

#23. Cart66: This is a premium WordPress e-commerce plugin.

#24. WP e-Commerce: As like WooCommorce this is another free WordPress plugin with premium add-ons are available.

#25. E-Junkie: This is another popular e-commerce platform for selling digital products.

#26. Gumroad: This resource makes very easy to sell your digital products. 

Use WordPress Affiliate Plugins

We all know that WordPress is the one of the most popular CMS to build a blog or website. According to BuiltWith there are 17,673,042 and increasing, live sites are using WordPress to run their blogs or websites. And I hope you are also using WordPress CMS for your blog.

There are several affiliate plugins with which you can automate your affiliate links and can add them in a blog posts' content. Such plugins are made to save time and can automate the system to promote produce within the content. Check out some of the popular WordPress affiliate plugins.

#27. Affiliates: This plugin is available for free.

#28. Affiliates Pro: The pricing of this plugin is $59.

#29. Affiliate Royale: The pricing of this plugin is $85.

#30. Magic Affiliate: The pricing of this plugin is $89.

#31. WPMU DEV Affiliates: The pricing of this plugin is $19 per month. 

In-text Ads

One of the most popular and majorly accepted by all the bloggers. In-text Ads is the creative way to serve the ads inside, upside, at the end of content, and at so many places on a blog or website. It has been noticed that audience attracts more to such ads type and Click Through Rate of these ads are higher as compared to other ways of promotional ideas. Google Adsense is one of the popular platforms that we all blogger know but which are the others? Let we explore them as well.

#32. Google AdSense: This is one of the easiest ways that are provided by Google.

#33. Infolinks: This is the great option for in-text ads.

#34. Clicksor: This is one of the great ways that offers inline text ads, banners, popunders and more.

#35. Result Links: This option target on in-text ads.

#36. Kontera: This is the long-standing option that is the best solution for in-text ads.

#37 Yahoo Bing NetWork Contextual Ads: This in-text ad option powered by Media.net.

Introduce Your Own Affiliate Program

If you have an online store and selling a product online then launching your own affiliate program can undoubtedly increase the sale. Promoting your products on your blog may have limitation to reach a more potential audience. The smart way is to allow publishers to promote your products and offer them attractive commissions for each sale from their referral. This is an effective and quick way to increase the sale, and you can make money by blogging as well as selling your products online.

There are some modern tools, which offer excellent features to manage your affiliate program. Check them all below.

#38. iDevAffiliate: iDevAffiliate affiliate software provides you with affordable affiliate program software for you to start your affiliate tracking!

#39. OsiAffiliate: Omnistar Affiliate Software provides you with affordable affiliate tracking software to grow your business. Over 14000 companies use the software7umnw4s-+.

#40. Ambassador: Easily build customized referral campaigns to engage customers, affiliates, influencers, employees, colleagues, and other advocates across all digital properties.

#41. Jrox: Create your own affiliate marketing program with the JROX Affiliate Marketing Software.

#42. Post Affiliate Pro: Sit back and watch your revenue grow with Post Affiliate Pro. It is the leading affiliate software, trusted by more than 30000 companies worldwide.

Sell Membership

The excellent option to monetize your blog or website is selling a membership. By offering members access to some exclusive content or resource, you can produce recurring revenue. If your blog is about design and development, then there are so many design and development industries who are offering some software to sale with membership. Try them and you can monetize your blog by promoting and selling membership.

#43. aMember: This is the most popular software that manages the membership websites. This software links a wide variety of CMSs and platforms. Starting price of this software is $179.95.

#44. Wishlist Member: This is the most popular WordPress plugin, and the pricing of this plugin is $197.

#45. Restrict Content Pro: This WordPress plugin is known for its robust membership managing system. The pricing of this software is $42. It doesn't include any extensive features but yes it is very user-friendly.

#46. Member Mouse: This is WordPress plugin which is robust membership plugin, and monthly price of this plugin starts with $19.95.

#47 SubHub: This is also a good software which has the starting price is $97 per month.

Hosting Affiliate Programs

Hosting affiliate programs can help you to make little extra money. Nowadays, this option is the new trend to make money online. Almost every hosting company offers an affiliate program with which you can make few more extra bucks to add to your monthly income. With the attractive and highly paid affiliate programs, hosting companies also provide attractive ads which you can place on your blog and encourage your visitors click and buy a hosting plan. There are several new hosts that you may want to consider.

#48. Bluehost: An Extremely popular host that provide effective affiliate program.

#49. WPEngine: This host is specialized in managing WordPress hosting and offers the feature like high affiliate commission for referrals.

#50. HostGator: This is another leading host like Bluehost that offers a generous affiliate program.

#51. Media Temple: This host is known as a leader in the hosting industry which has the potentially lucrative affiliate program.

Sponsored Posts and Reviews

Publishing sponsored posts is another great way to make money by leveraging the success and popularity of your blog. This option is more popular a few years ago but still it is the trend today.

#52. PostJoint: It accepts paid content for your blog.

#53. SocialSpark: It is kind of marketplace that finds advertisers who want you to review their products.

#54. SponsoredReviews: With this, you can get connected with advertisers looking to pay for blog reviews.

#55. Izea: With using this can connect with influential content creators.

Podcasts

In this technology world, there are so many bloggers that make money by publishing podcasts. With which they offer some additional opportunities for ad revenue and sponsorships. There is a resource with which you can also publish a podcast.

#56. Podtrac: This resource connects podcasters and advertisers.

Generate and Sell Access Online Courses

Today, there are many online training and education websites, and it is the huge part of the industry. The most likely audience demand online training related to design and development. There is a site named Udemy that allows you to sell your own course to a huge crowd of audience.

This task is a little bit time consuming and obviously need hard work too to create an online course. But if you are offering online tutorials and do not want to limit promotion only on your blog then give a try to well-known online courses platforms generate and sell your online courses.

#57. Udemy: Udemy is an online learning and teaching marketplace with over 40000 courses and 12 million students.

#58. Pathwright: It has everything you need to create your own online school, sell online courses, and grow your learning community

#59. CourseMercant: A Shopping Cart system designed for the sale of online courses, face-to-face courses, conferences, webinars and training materials.

#60. OpenSesame: It offers the broadest, deepest, freshest catalog of business training sessions in the world. With over 20,000 courses from the world

#61. ProProfs: Knowledge Management Software for Quizzes, Tests, Training, Flashcards, Knowledge Base. Get started with our knowledge management softwares.

#62. Digital Chalk: It is a complete solution for creating and delivering your training online.

Gate for Premium Content

Another and well-known money making strategy for every blogger. If you have a large, loyal fan following then, you can start to gate premium content. There are few resources which can help you to monetize your selling access to premium content on your blog or website.

#63. Pivotshare: This resource sells the premium video content

#64. Piano: For access to premium content it built a revenue stream which is based on payment

#65. Cleeng: This sell premium content like video, e-books, live events and newspapers.

On Your Website Include a Job Board

To monetize your blog or website start including a job board. You can create an industry-specific job board and for that, you can charge companies to post a job listing to be seen by your audience. To set up your own job board here are some of the options.

#66. webJobs

#67. WPJobboard WordPress Plugin

#68. 9t05 WordPress Theme

#69. Jobify WordPress Theme

Sell Your Products Via Auctioning

You might think that how can you sell your products via auction. But yes you can do this too. There are several themes and plugins which offer to build your auctioning system on your blog or website. Below are few popular plugin and theme I know which can help you to setup action system.

#70. WordPress Auction Plugin

#71. WP Auction Plugin

#72. Responsive Auction Theme 

WordPress Plugin for Monetizing Your Site

Apart from all the above strategies, there are some more WordPress plugins and if you are WordPress user then with the use of this plugin you can surely monetize your blog or website. Each of these plugins has its own unique functionality. So let see what those plugins are.

#73. Sabai Directory: This is the plugin that allows s you to add a directory to your site, and also it helps you integrate with PayPal to accept payment for directory listings. Pricing of this plugin is $29.

#74. Easy Plugin for AdSense Pro: With this plugin, you can sync your blog with AdSense and pricing of this plugin is $18.

#75. Page Peel Pro: With using this plugin you can use page peel ads on your blog or website. The Pricing of it $16.

#76. Advert Flap Pro: With this plugin, you can create unobtrusive ads that will get your visitors attentions. Pricing of this plugin is $16.

#77. Interstitial Ads: You can show ads that your visitors will see the page views. Pricing of it is $21.

#78. WP Header Bar: This is the plugin that offers you to create responsive notification bars with a lot of different features. Pricing of this plugin is $19.

#79. WP Pre Post Advertising: This plugin helps you to show an ad before the actual post/page. The ad adds a countdown too and when it reaches to the page/post will be shown. Pricing of it is $12.

#80. 5sec Link Remover: To your registered/ paid user using this plugin you can show them links only. The Starting price of this plugin is $10.

#81. WP-Insert: This is the free plugin with which you can insert ads into specific locations in between your content.

#82. WP Auto Affiliate Links: This is another free plugin that automatically create affiliate links in between your content based on keyword and yes your choice of affiliate programs.

#83. Google AdSense: Another free plugin that is very easy to implement into your WordPress blog or website.

Well, these are some of the strategies which you can use to monetize your blog or website, but also make sure you get enough traffic. Because the income is directly proportional to your traffic and there are of course other ways for you to monetize your blog or website. if you have any idea then share here with us.

Source: 83 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog for Smart Passive Income